this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
-21 points (32.2% liked)

Asklemmy

42520 readers
851 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

You want to defederate from the largest Lemmy instance, the poster child, and the mascot of Lemmy? Good luck. They are Lemmy now.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The way .world has dominated is problematic for federation, honestly.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I agree, but it's too late now. Even Sync defaults to the .world instance, and at this rate, they'll only grow bigger.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

That seems like an argument from tradition though. Just because something has default become some way doesn't mean it has to remain so. I think there's bigger principles at play, censorship of minority opinions for starters.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah it won't happen on its own, there would need to be a concentrated effort to oppose .world domination at this point.

It won't be a problem until .world starts demanding mutual defederation (i.e. instances federated with .world have to pledge to defederate from instances .world deems problematic)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

.world domination

😏

It won’t be a problem until .world starts demanding mutual defederation

To invoke the fallacy that isn't always fallacious (slippery slope) that seems like the logical next step. If they amass too much power and are already abusing it this way, what's to prevent them doing this next?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think the concept of a mascot or poster child for Lemmy is somewhat antithetical to the concept of federated social media. Kind of a no gods no masters situation.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Is it really federated social media now though? With how much .world has grown, they could disable federation and be their own walled garden.

| instance | active users monthly | |


|


| | lemmy.world | 34436 | | lemmy.ml | 6716 | | lemm.ee | 4265 |

Like, they have nearly 5x more active users than .ml at this point, how ridiculous is that?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I feel like it’s been so active because app developers almost all default to lemmy.world. It’s a bit concerning honestly, I wish things were a bit more spread out because everyone is at the mercy of Lemmy world and as we’ve seen several times it doesn’t look like the admins of the instance are making decisions based on community feedback.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I suspect most people who joined Lemmy ended up on .world because they would have gone here first:

https://join-lemmy.org/

For a while Lemmy.World was one of the first ones you came across; between that, the open signups and the “general purpose” moniker, rapid growth was probably inevitable.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Add the fact that lemmy.ml and others were/still are doing applications for sign up instead of an automated system. I applied twice for a .ml account and never got a single response, not even a denial or "your application is being processed". I have no idea if my application was ever even seen.

On the other hand, I signed up to lemmy.world and kbin.social in minutes and have been using them ever since.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I was tempted to join .ml but the banner at the top of the application form was discouraging. Went to .world and here we are.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah, it felt a lot like "you need to prove you're worthy" more than just proving you're not a bot.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I mean, if I wanted a walled garden I'd just go back to Reddit. Federation is part of lemmy's beauty, but if the imposition of a particular mindset through defederation becomes the norm, why would anyone respond with anything but defederation?

In short: why tolerate intolerance?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Why though? They've done nothing worthy of defederation, they're simply trying to maintain their standard of quality. And they are a HUGE INSTANCE.

Extremists are always going to get pigeonholed by the rest of the network that doesn't want to see that shit filling up their All page and infiltrating their comments.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Leave blocking communities and instances to users. If you don’t want to see “extremists” in your All page, block the community. Block the users in the comments.

Defederation should happen based on the instance community’s collective decision (no vote was done for defederation) and when an instance is actively working against the rules of a federated instance. Hexbear has not shown itself to be breaking the rules or to be planning to, and the arguments used by the world admins were all opinions and not based in reality. The admins of hexbear specifically made a post telling their users to respect federated instances rules.

Yes, the users are opinionated - but that in and of itself isn’t worth defederating with.

Mind you I’m not about to start asking to defederate from world, but I’m still kinda worried that this type of preemptive defederation is going to be the norm for world.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I would love to be able to block entire instances but I don't believe that is possible yet. If it is please tell me how cause I have a bunch that would be on the chopping block!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Sadly I don’t think it’s possible on the Lemmy-ui/server level, but some mobile apps allow you to (maybe just one, note sure. Either Memmy or Voyager since I use them interchangeably). I also look forward to the ability to block instances fully on desktop.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I can block instances on Connect for Android.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Can we block instances yet?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

I don’t believe that there’s a lemmy-ui or server side option for it, but some mobile apps do let you block instances which for me is good enough.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

It's not just about blocking it for yourself, though. Content from all federated instances ends up in YOUR instance's All tab. So when extremist instances sneak in and start federating with everyone, their shit gets broadcast to a huge audience that everyone can see, including users not logged in. So by not defederating, the admins are effectively supporting the platform of extremists and not enforcing their own instance content rules through inaction. This is what I mean by admins needing to maintain their own standard of content on their own instances.

We just did this at lemmy.one with exploding-heads for the same reasons.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago

I really feel like everyone is letting their emotions and ideologies run the narrative here. Lemmy.world was already defederated with Hexbear, everyone was. What they are doing is choosing to remain defederated once Hexbear federates. And that is perfectly within their rights. Until we get better moderation tools and the ability block instances at the user level I can completely understand why the admin and mods don't want to deal with potential issues. Maybe once we all have better tools then we can try playing nice together. This is the same reasoning Beehaw took and I think it makes sense in this case as well.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I disagree with lemmy.world's decision, for three reasons:

  1. Address problems as they appear - negligence is bad, but so is jumping at the gun.
  2. Locking users out because they're misbehaving is different than locking them out under the assumption that they'll misbehave.
  3. Given that lemmy.world is a generic purpose instance, odds are that it would work better by letting users sort themselves out, and only intervene on problems when it is not reasonable to expect users to do so.

I also think that lemmy.world's current size in comparison with other instances is a bit problematic. It's great to see instances growing but it would be better if said growth was spread out.

Just my two cents, mind you. I'm from neither instance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

There’s a naked man outside a store, whippin’ his dong around & throwing poo at passersby…

Do you have to let him the store just because he hasn’t actually done any of that stuff inside yet?

Or can you preemptively decide he won’t be allowed inside?

FWIW, I agree with everything you’ve said, just looking for clarification.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Visiting hexbear costs you nothing, dude. Take a look at their official statement about federation: https://www.hexbear.net/post/280770?scrollToComments=false

Please read and respect the rules of the community instance in which you are posting/commenting. Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated. Realize that you are a representative of the hexbear instance when you post on other instances.

Is this "a naked man outside a store, whippin’ his dong around & throwing poo at passersby" to you?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

I read that, thanks. From my point of view, when I read the term “dirtbag lib dunking”, yes, I did equate that with poo flinging & dong whippin’.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (8 children)

If he dressed himself before trying to enter my store, I'd probably let him in. However I'd keep watching him; and on his first attempt to take off his clothes, whip his dong or throw poo, I'd throw him out.

Note however that there's an important difference between both situations: defederation affects a whole group of people. We could claim that some of them were whipping their dongs, were throwing poo, but we can't automatically point at all of them and say "you're all at fault"; that would be incorrect and immoral.

Note also that I'd likely see this in a different way, if the defederating instance was beehaw instead of lemmy.world. Due to the purpose of each instance (generic and free-for-all vs. safe space), and overall impact on the lemmy side of the Fediverse.

load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I googled this to find the drama and the first link is to their fucking cth community lol

you don't get to be edgelord shitposters and then complain when people don't let you come over to kick their sandcastles down anymore

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What's the issue with their cth community?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

no issues on its own but when your whole brand is edgelord shitposting, you can't be surprised when people don't want to federate

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Defederation should always be seen as last solution and should not be a preemptive action.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm out of the loop: What's the deal with Hexbear?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

They are authoritarian Russian/Chinese stans, pretending to be leftists.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

No one stans Russia in hexbear, we literally say "the collapse of the Soviet Union was the largest humanitarian disaster of the latter half of the 20th century"

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Instances can defederate whenever they want, but skimming the sidebar and announcements, it's weirder to me that lemmy.world is still federated with lemmygrad, which seems to be very similar to hexbear.

Anyone have any insight into the difference between lemmygrad and hexbear?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Interesting that the top comment is this:

Not in favour of this. I chose Lemmy.world because I wanted an instance that would federate even with people I might disagree with. If it's illegal and abusive, sure. But to defederate on ideological grounds? I was planning a recurring donation but this makes me consider setting up my own instance. They're welcome to whatever discussions they want to have on their instance. As long as they respect the rules of other instances when they're here, then everybody wins. As for their point about dismantling western propaganda - if they have documented sources then let's have a conversation. It's not like there isn't western propaganda

I don't remember which episode, but the podcast blocked and reported described exactly that that is what's going to happen to the fediverse. Sad.

(found it. The conversation is about mastodon and starts at 43:30)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Adding to what others have said, opposing viewpoints are GOOD. Well reasoned opinions should be encouraged. I don't want to end up in another curated echo chamber built by someone else. Add the tools for users to block an instance and for blocks to work better in general. Give us the tools to decide our content. Leave the curation up to the users.

Otherwise you'll just end up with everyone spinning up their own instance and building a million individual echo chambers(tho it wouldn't be bad if there were more instances lol)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

It would be very funny ngl

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Why are all the instances defederating each other?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Are there others defederating lately?

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Politics and ideology like usual. It's ruinning every social media

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I'm conflicted with lemmy.world's decision to defederate with them.

In theory I disagree with them because I think open discussion is always better than silencing or deplatforming.

Of course it's a bit different with activists who are not looking for an honest discussion, only to further their ideology.

Also, getting a swarm of tankies will not make the instance a fun place and will probably make me switch to another one who defederated with them.

I don't mind people whom I disagree with, I'll gladly talk with both libertarians and communists, but in my eyes tankies are the same as neonazies.

load more comments
view more: next ›